[svlug] Re: Domain k5di.com (fwd)

[Scott Hess]

On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, Karl Larsen wrote:
> Guys, I may not know that what I want is impossible. I leased a domain
> from these guys below and I can't seem to make them understand that I
> want my domain to propogate to ALL DNS in the world. Is this not
> possible?
> 
> Please look at the messages that I have sent and they have sent.  It's
> clear I do not understand.

A domain is simply an abstract thing.  At the top level, you have a
registrar (name-services.com, in this case) who can associate domain
nameservers with your domain, and propagate that information to the root
nameservers.  Your whois record indicates that this has been done:

# whois k5di.com
...
Name Servers:
   dns1.name-services.com
   dns2.name-services.com
   dns3.name-services.com
   dns4.name-services.com
   dns5.name-services.com
...

But, when I try to figure out what hosts are in your domain, I get 
nothing:

# dig k5di.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> k5di.com
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 53741
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;k5di.com.			IN	A

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
k5di.com.		3403	IN	SOA	dns1.name-services.com. 
info.name-services.com. 2002050701 3600 120 86400 3600

;; Query time: 29 msec
;; SERVER: 64.125.66.64#53(64.125.66.64)
;; WHEN: Thu Mar 11 20:02:59 2004
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 86

Compare that to what I get against one of _my_ domains:

# dig sighup.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> sighup.com
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 51477
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 5, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;sighup.com.			IN	A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
sighup.com.		86400	IN	A	64.125.66.64

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
sighup.com.		86400	IN	NS	ns14.zoneedit.com.
sighup.com.		86400	IN	NS	ns.sighup.com.
sighup.com.		86400	IN	NS	ns1.secondary.com.
sighup.com.		86400	IN	NS	ns2.secondary.com.
sighup.com.		86400	IN	NS	ns7.zoneedit.com.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns.sighup.com.		86400	IN	A	64.125.66.64

;; Query time: 29 msec
;; SERVER: 64.125.66.64#53(64.125.66.64)
;; WHEN: Thu Mar 11 20:09:12 2004
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 169


There are two interesting sections there.  The "ANSWER SECTION" says that
"sighup.com" has an "A" record associating it with the IP address
64.125.66.64.  That means you can ping sighup.com - many domains don't
have A records for the domain itself, only for hosts within
(www.sighup.com, for instance).  The "AUTHORITY SECTION" lists the
nameservers that can be considered authoritative for this domain.

I'm not certain why name-services.com wouldn't prefill your NS records,
but that probably won't matter. My _guess_ is that to get things working,
you'll need to use a web UI at name-services.com to enter in A and CNAME
records (and probably MX records).  "A" records map specific names to
specific IP addresses:

primary.sighup.com.	86400	IN	A	64.125.66.64

You can have multiple A records for a single IP.  CNAME records map names
to other names:

www.sighup.com.		86400	IN	CNAME	primary.sighup.com.

The trailing period indicates that the domain is fully-qualified - in
config files you can use "primary" as a shorthand for "primary.<domain>.".
You generally shouldn't chain CNAME records, but it generally works to do
so (but it doesn't work for all users, so don't do it).  There are also MX
records which tell where to deliver mail, in this case for everyone in
sighup.com:

sighup.com.		86400	IN	MX	10 mail.sighup.com.

The host in the MX record should refer to an A record (it should be
mappable _directly_ to an IP address, rather than to another name).

Anyhow, I'm not certain what else I can productively speculate on, here.

-scott